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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26625808">Blood Magic</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo'>sigo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Armitage Hux Smokes, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Autumn, Blow Jobs, Bottom Armitage Hux, Bottom Kylo Ren, Coming In Pants, Dry Humping, Gothic, Horror, Idiots in Love, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Kylo Ren in Love, M/M, Murder, Painter Armitage Hux, Photographer Kylo Ren, Porn With Plot, Possessive Kylo Ren, Protective Kylo Ren, Seduction to the Dark Side, Spooky, Suicidal Thoughts, Sweaters, Switching, That's Not How The Force Works, Top Armitage Hux, Top Kylo Ren, its halloween bitches, so much plot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:55:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26625808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'Hey Red, you staying up at Skywalker's?'<br/>Hux chuckled to himself, remembering the bartender’s question. It seemed more inane than sinister to Hux now, wine drunk and in his lover’s secure grasp. Kylo asked what was so funny, and in muted tones Hux started to tell it.<br/>“I found something weird today,” Kylo said when Hux was done.</p><p>//Armitage Hux and Kylo Ren flee to Anakin Skywalker's secluded and abandoned mansion in the Colorado wilderness, but there's something strange and unnerving about the place. And about Kylo, now that they've moved in.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>160</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blood Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>TW -- Hux overuses alcohol and cigarettes as coping mechanisms. Kylo mentions suicidal ideation once. Horror imagery. Murder and general villainy, details of that in end notes in case you need it. This story has multiple inspirations -- Laird Barron, The Shining, Knives Out (house as a character etc etc), and a playlist which I made BEFORE writing which is out of order for me. Not beta’d as always, mistakes are mine.<br/><a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4gS4Q2Zv7EvI032PWTfqoR?si=j9TRAqI5S0azGe7gdt5wmQ">Blood Magic Playlist</a><br/><a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YRMYaT5fte0cPWH5UVGW5?si=J3LTK6tkRyqlKb_taM7eHg">Kylux Spotify Playlist</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>The leaves were turning shades of orange and yellow and, higher on the mountain, brilliant bloody red.</p><p>Hux fueled the car at a petrol station with a fading sign. It didn’t seem to be a chain franchise, and he doubted the owner had a healthy savings account. He didn’t recall the name of this town on the map, and probably wouldn’t look. Wherever he was, it had seen better days. The buildings were graying now, the paint chipped and the lives inside washed out like ink from a soaked page. If this place were a book, it would be one that had been left to rot on a trail somewhere, swelling up after a rain and going green with mold, the intentions of both the author and the owner long forgotten.</p><p>Hux could see a tavern down the way, and a motel à la Bates with the <em> no vacancy </em> sign lit up, a litany of shabby vehicles parked out front. It was the sort of place that morphed from motel to apartment complex over time. There was one traffic light on the winding two-lane road that could take him toward Boulder and Denver and then back out into the wider world, but he wouldn’t go that way. He’d turn left and head further into the wilds around Estes Park, back to the lodge.</p><p>The only sign that had been repainted in the petrol station’s windows was the one that read LIQUOR with an arrow pointing to the door on the opposite side of the building, and that was enticing enough even if he hadn’t needed to hobble in to pay for the fuel. He picked up a few extra supplies at both the petrol counter and the liquor store ‘next door’, cursing puritanical lawmakers as his knee twinged: canned peaches in lieu of fresh fruit (he supposed they’d have to figure out groceries other than pantry items eventually), and five packs of reds from the petrol station. Three dusty bottles of whiskey for himself and one of tequila for Kylo from the liquor store. He paid cash.</p><p>After he loaded the car, he drove down to the tavern and ordered two shots of bourbon there, simply to avoid pulling off the mountain road and downing half a bottle in the car. He wanted a lemon slice, but didn’t ask for it. In addition to being smoky and antique, the tavern was filthy. Hux took his medicine beneath the staring glass eyes of several mounted deer heads, and then put cash on the counter.</p><p>The bartender, a handsome olive-skinned man in a worn leather jacket, watched Hux knock the shots back one after the other and then poured another on the house and slid it across the bar wordlessly. He was biting his lip, wanting to ask something. Hux didn’t waste the effort to glare at him, and so the question came.</p><p>“Hey Red, you staying up at Skywalker's?”</p><p>Hux hesitated, the glass half-raised, and then set it down still full and limped back out of the bar without answering. It was best to stop at two shots anyway. He had a long and treacherous drive ahead. He chewed over the bartender’s question the whole way, and the morbid implication of the smirk on his face when he’d asked it. Was he staying at Skywalker Manse indeed. Kylo had been sparse on the details and Hux hadn’t researched it, purposefully leaving the ghosts of the past where they belonged, but Hux gathered that something had happened to its original resident long ago. Something straight out of a pulp horror novel. It clearly still resonated with the inhabitants of the nearby towns. The bartender was a total stranger to Hux and yet he’d still known where Hux lived. The hills had eyes.</p><p><em> No </em> , Hux corrected himself, looking at the view in front of him as his car climbed higher, <em> the mountain </em>. He shook his head to clear it of that paranoia -- of course word had gotten out. The resident haunted house was lived-in again. It was idle gossip and the novelty would wear off. It shouldn’t frighten him like it did. It was possible the bartender had only asked because Hux was ginger-haired, and that detail about one of the newcomers had been passed around.</p><p><em> It still means they’re watching </em>.</p><p>Two weeks prior, he’d fled Seattle. Kylo was the reason, really. They met in the art commune five years ago and fell swiftly into antagonism that doubled as flirtation. The rent was deliberately low, and so it was not a place either of them technically <em> needed </em> to be. Hux had money from his father’s death, but he liked a collaborative environment. Kylo hated everything and everyone and would have preferred his own space, but hadn’t the foresight to remain on speaking terms with his parents. They’d wire money if he asked. He didn’t ask. Hux could sympathize with that level of pride. By the time they realized the rambling house in Seattle was really a pot of water on a proverbial stove, they were boiling in it. Kylo came to blows with Andrew Snoke, who owned the place -- it was usually the temperamental generosity of the wealthy that allowed spaces like the commune to exist, in Hux’s experience.</p><p>Snoke was as bad as they came. Richer than sin, manipulative, vengeful, and his rages overwhelmed his impulse control. He was older, but mid-fifties hadn’t weakened him yet, and he was fully capable of tossing Hux down the stairs in a fit, the reason Hux’s thirty-four year old knee now felt about eighty and the reason Kylo had attacked Snoke in turn. Snoke was capable of a lot worse -- Hux knew Snoke was a bit of a gun aficionado, because it was a trait they shared. He didn’t want to admit it even to himself, but he feared Snoke the way one fears a force of nature. A forest fire.</p><p>So, Hux and Kylo shacked up together in the Rockies while Snoke was free on bail, awaiting trial back on the rainy West Coast. It might be that he’d do a turn in King County Jail, but it might not. Snoke could afford good lawyers, and while he’d started the fight, he’d also sustained injuries. He might get off with community service, and if that came to pass Kylo and Hux would not be returning to Washington. They could live on Hux’s inheritance for a long time. Hux hadn’t worked a traditional job since a gig at a theatre in uni, opting to focus solely on painting as soon as Brendol’s fortuitous demise allowed it. They could supplement Hux’s savings with Kylo’s sales. He was acclaimed in certain circles, and his photos were very much in demand. He’d brought along several complicated and expensive cameras complete with extra lenses that screwed on, and tripods, and lighting equipment. Hux had paid to have their possessions shipped, and they’d flown. He was unable to fathom their tumultuous union surviving a road trip -- he himself was prone to carsickness.</p><p>The lodge, however, was Kylo’s. Or near enough. His parents wanted nothing to do with the place but wouldn’t sell it, and Kylo had a key. He didn’t think Leia and Han would kick him out even if they caught on to his staying there. It sat high in the mountains, a ninety-minute drive from anything resembling civilization, amid abandoned logging roads and picturesque views. There was even a cold, clear lake a nine mile hike from it. The driveway was a narrow and unmarked dirt track, cut into a tangle of brush and trees and then winding a hundred yards up a steep hillside. Skywalker Manse was not visible from the gravel lane that passed for the ‘road’. It was the perfect bolt-hole. Snoke wouldn’t find them here.</p><p>Hux arrived home just before nightfall, drawing his greatcoat around him against the chill of the wind even though he wore a sweater beneath. Kylo came to the porch and leaned against one of the wide brick columns next to the stairs. The first thing anyone who met him noticed about Kylo was that he was big. Six-foot-two and thick with carefully built and maintained muscle. He looked damn near carved from marble without a shirt on, a quality that Hux privately both admired and was achingly jealous of. He’d always been extraordinarily thin, though he nearly matched Kylo in height. Kylo had a shirt on now, a shapeless black thing. Such clothing made up the entirety of his wardrobe, as if he’d based it on a caricature of the New York City artist. His features were just as big as the rest of him: pretty brown eyes and plush lips, but a large nose too, so he wasn’t <em> too </em> pretty. The overall effect was appropriately rugged. For all the undeniable ways in which Kylo infuriated him, Hux suspected that a man more tailored to his personal tastes could not have been made in a lab.</p><p>Kylo had offered to go to town himself on this errand and Hux had refused. The reason why went unspoken. It was more than his knee that was healing, and the other wound was ancient and deep. Brendol -- not, as luck would have it, fond of his skinny homosexual son, and not any more opposed to physical violence than Snoke was -- had made every decision for Hux for twenty-five torturous years, and even now Hux coveted freedom. He needed to do things on his own like he needed air to breathe. He took a deep breath now, smelling the dusty-warm scent of autumn leaves and the sharp hint of ice on the wind, and brought his paper bag full of vices and fruit inside.</p><p>Skywalker Manse felt less like a mansion and more like a fossil, something primordial and dead that had blackened beneath the earth and then been uncovered. It was made of red brick and dark marble and polished black wood that gleamed like obsidian. The wallpaper was vaguely dizzying, a tangle of forms that might have been plants and might have been animals, rendered in bruise-colors. Long, narrow windows studded the walls and its ceilings were vaulted. It was a veritable castle, and Hux had thought at first that if he were Kylo, he wouldn’t have cut ties with his parents over a preferred name and other benign misalignments. Then he’d thought about exactly how long he’d made a beaten and bloodied fool of himself trying to impress Brendol and banished such thoughts -- perhaps Kylo had the right idea. Kylo disclosed that his grandfather had ordered and overseen construction. And the rambling house contained <em> collections </em>.</p><p>There were rooms of starey dead animals like the deer in the ramshackle tavern, except there were more than deer in this place. There were great black wolves, their faces taxidermied with frozen snarls and bright yellow glass eyes put in their dry sockets. Another room held guns, some of them outlandish. Another held jewelry. The study they used as a living room had swords on the walls, strange ones that looked like they were honed from colored glass. There was one missing that Kylo said his Uncle Luke held on to, frowning a little at the thought. Kylo had taken a gleaming red one down and showed Hux a few drills, slicing it through the air. Anakin Skywalker had apparently been an adept swordsman, and Kylo took lessons in his memory throughout his youth. He liked the blades. Hux did not. Something about them gave him the creeps. Maybe it was that they looked almost like toys with their garish hues, but the edges were sharp. The edges looked <em> very </em> sharp.</p><p>The back of the property hosted a reflecting pool that might hold more algae and dead leaves than water (Hux had no plans to rectify that), a stone courtyard encrusted with dead ivy, a raised sparring dojo that Kylo spent their first week un-encrusting from its layer of grime, and a flagstone path into the woods.</p><p>Hux thought that he could live here the rest of the year and go into a room a day without running out before January first. They mostly lived in five: the labyrinthian kitchen, the sword-study with its roaring fireplace, and the nearest three bedrooms (and their adjoining bathrooms, he supposed that made the grand total eight). One bedroom for sleeping together and then one extra bedroom each repurposed as studios. Carnal relations did not have a designated room. The pantry was in the cellar, and Hux went down as infrequently as possible. He usually sent Kylo. He hated that wet lightless space.</p><p>There were paintings in the lodge, and Hux didn’t like them either. He could appreciate darker subject matter in art, but it wasn’t the subject matter that upset him. That wasn’t it exactly. The scenes were beautiful: the mountain at sunset, the soaring pines near the lake. But he didn’t like the shadows. The artist had painted them velvety-soft, and sometimes Hux swore there were figures hidden inside, just beyond the point of seeing. Figures that watched.</p><p>There were modern renovations. Generators powered the plumbing and lights. Heat was still the arena of log-and-chimney, but Kylo enjoyed chopping wood and Hux enjoyed watching him. There was no landline phone, and cell service was unreliable. It seemed to move around the house sometimes, and Hux never got more than two bars. Kylo insisted that the transistor radio worked, but Hux couldn’t be goaded into trying it.</p><p>Kylo raised an eyebrow when Hux took the whiskey bottles and cigarette packs from the bag, but made no comment. They stowed away the rations together, and made pasta and a simple sauce from dried herbs and tomato paste for dinner. They didn’t even bicker much through the process. They shared a can of peaches and a bottle of wine from the cellar for dessert, reclining in front of the roaring fire Kylo built in the study.</p><p>Conversation lulled. They’d been lightheartedly arguing the merits of depictions of abuse in art -- <em> violence is a poor metaphor for violence </em>, argued Hux, who’d been made painfully aware more than once in his life that the tenebrous hold Brendol kept on his temper was the difference between bruises and a concussion, a concussion and a shattered skull. Kylo, whose experience extended to half-cocked bar fights and who usually came out on top in the end, had taken the other side, accusing Hux of supporting censorship. There was no heat to the argument; neither of them really cared. It was comfortable -- squabbling was their stasis -- but they fell silent as the sky went black, Hux reclining against Kylo’s chest and Kylo’s arms wrapped around him.</p><p>Until Hux chuckled to himself, remembering the bartender’s question. It seemed more inane than sinister to Hux now, wine drunk and in his lover’s secure grasp. Kylo asked what was so funny, and in muted tones Hux started to tell it.</p><p>“I found something weird today,” Kylo said when Hux was done. He’d kept silent during Hux’s story, but his embrace tightened almost imperceptibly when Hux admitted to shooting bourbon in a far-off tavern before dinner. Hux’s drinking was a matter of contention. The smoking, too. He’d overindulged in one or the other or both in previous years, and relapsed following the incident at the commune. But godfuckingdamn, was he not allowed his little sins? After the life he’d led? And he <em> had </em> cut back, after he and Kylo began whatever it was between them five years ago ( <em> boyfriend </em> never felt quite right in Hux’s mind, it didn’t encapsulate the depth of it, but they’d never exchanged rings). But it was true that for a few months before Kylo introduced intrigue back into the dismal routine Hux kept, he’d had a bottle to his lips from eight to five, as if his employer was Johnny Walker.</p><p>“In the house?’ Hux asked.</p><p>Kylo hummed a negative.</p><p>“Where’d you go?” They only had one vehicle here.</p><p>“Walked down the path out back. Took a camera, thought I might get some photos that were…” Kylo clicked his tongue, “different. Something <em> different </em>. Being cooped up here is strange after Seattle.”</p><p>Hux nodded, understanding completely. He missed coffee shops and bookstores, mostly the ones with cats. And bars. Best not mention the bars. “How weird?”</p><p>“Maybe weird isn’t the right word.”</p><p>“Out with it.”</p><p>“That path goes a long way, and then it turns into a trail. Deer, I think. It’s narrow but beaten down. We should walk to the end sometime, see where it goes.”</p><p>“Trails don’t go anywhere. We’d get lost and one of us would eat the other to survive,” Hux said mildly. Kylo kissed his temple. Then his ear. Then Kylo licked the shell of his ear, and the arm around Hux’s chest tightened further. “The trail…?” Hux prompted.</p><p>“About a quarter mile in, there was a clearing and I started walking around snapping pictures. I actually didn’t notice it until it showed up on the camera, but there was...I don’t know, a tree house or something.”</p><p>“You climbed the tree,” Hux said, letting condescension leak into his voice.</p><p>Kylo held up one hand in front of Hux’s face, showing him his scraped knuckles. “Climbed that sucker. There was a ladder up the back but it was rotten. Sections of the platform were too. No walls.”</p><p>“You found a hunter’s blind, not a treehouse,” Hux said. “And if it’s rotten it’s a deathtrap. Fifteen feet up?”</p><p>“At the least.”</p><p>“What on earth possessed you to--” Hux sighed. “Never mind.” Kylo usually didn’t have or need a reason for his idiocy. “You could have gotten yourself into a bind.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Kylo agreed. “My foot went through in one spot and I almost shit myself. I think if I got stuck out there I could scream forever and you wouldn’t have heard me from here.”</p><p>“Was that it?” Hux asked, and then felt as though a cold draft passed over him, and thought, <em> let that be it </em>.</p><p>“Nope. Hold on to your butt, babe.” Kylo nudged at Hux until Hux sat up, and then extricated himself from below and bounded off.</p><p>“That means cigarettes,” Hux said sourly. “Not asses.”</p><p>Kylo returned with a filthy bundle of cloth and started to unroll it. Hux realized he was looking at a shaggy black cloak with a hood and cowl all sewn together. It almost looked like fur. Kylo held it up to his shoulders like a bride-to-be in a Hallmark movie measuring a wedding dress against her bosom, and the hem of the ratty thing fell to his ankles like it had been made for him. It seemed ancient. Hux could imagine it across the shoulders of some broad viking or medieval knight.</p><p>“You’ve probably introduced several colonies of insects to our home, bringing that inside.” Hux said. He wanted it gone, but not because of insects. It filled him with the same sort of dread as the glinting edges of the swords and the shadows in the paintings.</p><p>“Relax, I washed it. Isn’t it cool?”</p><p>“It’s disgusting.” Who had worn it? Hux pictured it wrapped around a hunter lying prone on the platform of his blind, finger poised over the trigger of his rifle. But it seemed more savage than that -- there were holes in it and singed edges. Hux thought of a man sneaking along, not in the woods but in the house, the cloak blending in with the writhing shadows, ready to slice a throat. His hand went instinctively to his.</p><p>“You’re funny,” Kylo said, and swirled the cloak around to fasten it over his shoulders before Hux could object. He struck a pose, one leg cocked out. He’d drunk enough of their bottle of wine to be feeling theatrical. Hux noticed that the cowl, too, was cut exactly to the width of Kylo’s shoulders. The overall effect was less humorous than Hux wished it was. Kylo’s shapeless back wardrobe lended itself to the image.</p><p>“Put it away.”</p><p>“I’m a wild man tonight. Better watch yourself,” Kylo teased, but obediently unfastened the cloak and threw it onto a chair. Perhaps he’d realized Hux wouldn’t welcome him back onto the couch with it on. He jumped onto the couch, his movements outwardly boisterous but also careful -- he’d never once hurt Hux, and tonight was no exception. Kylo settled his ass onto Hux’s hips and curled over him to cover his face in kisses. His breath tanged with wine and peach syrup. When he’d gotten some of the ardor out of his system and settled his immense weight onto Hux to drowse, Hux petting his hair, Hux spoke again.</p><p>“The bartender had a strange look on his face when he mentioned the house.”</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>It was the first Hux had mentioned it, and it felt a bit like pointing out a fart in a crowded room. Uncouth and unproductive. But there was no going back now. “Did something happen here?”</p><p>For a while Hux thought Kylo wouldn’t answer, and that would have been its own sort of relief. But then he did. “My grandfather fled here. He was cast out of his community. California, like mom and dad. Petaluma,” Kylo clarified, seeing Hux’s look. “There’d been a series of unsolved murders. Kids in the neighborhood, chopped to pieces. And then he killed my grandmother at home. Strangled her.”</p><p>Hux wasn’t sure what to say. His father’s face flashed behind his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he settled on. Kylo nuzzled his face against Hux’s chest.</p><p>“There’s more.”</p><p>“Of course there is. What else?”</p><p>“There were rumors that he did...rituals.”</p><p>“Pentagrams and neighbors’ pets disappearing?” Hux asked, forcing humor into his voice that he didn’t really feel. He regretted it as soon as he spoke -- it hadn’t been the pets. It had been the children.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>The air felt oppressive. Kylo’s weight on him was too much, but Hux’s urge to tell him to move stuck in his throat. The fire cast strange shadows on the walls that disappeared into the gloom of the vaulted ceiling. Hux shifted to push Kylo off of him and turned it into a movement beckoning Kylo to lay half on him instead of fully. Kylo obliged, settling one big hand on Hux’s stomach. His hand from fingertips to wrist spanned Hux’s waist easily, something that usually turned Hux on. Being thin never felt like a shame with Kylo’s hands on him. Right now Kylo’s hand made Hux feel fragile.</p><p>Kylo continued in a thick and halting voice, sounding ready to leap back into the safety of irreverence if Hux scoffed at him. But he <em> believed </em> it. Hux knew that. Kylo spoke in the same way he did when he was rambling on about his cameras -- clear, factual. Mundane. As if the insane scenarios he described were evident, there in your hands to observe. Hux resented it, because even if he’d never admit it he thought Kylo was clever. He didn’t doubt his judgement, but <em> this </em>....</p><p>“People said that he could pull objects to him or push them away, and jump great heights. And he read minds. He could tell what you were going to say before you said it. His eyes turned yellow in the night like a cat’s and he talked with animals. That he practiced with his sword every day and sometimes...sometimes the blade glowed.” Hux could hear palpable envy dripping from Kylo’s voice.</p><p>“That’s--” Hux started out of an effort to fill the silence when Kylo stopped speaking, but he couldn’t think of how to finish it. It was madness, of course. It was also like a child’s fantasy, except for the suspected murders.</p><p>“It’s true. Luke thinks it is, anyway. He said there’s this...force, sort of. Like magic. It’s in everyone’s blood but some people can use it. Mom won’t talk about it. And when they did an autopsy on my grandmother, they couldn’t find any damage on the <em> outside </em> of her throat.” Kylo’s voice was defensive.</p><p>Hux hadn’t met any of Kylo’s relations, and now thought with growing dismay that they all might belong in the looney bin, or at least the grandfather and uncle did. <em> And Kylo? </em>No, of course not. The wind howled outside, sounding like a living thing, and Hux shivered.</p><p>“So then he moved here?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Kylo said, breathing out a sigh against Hux’s neck, perhaps grateful that Hux hadn’t called him an idiot outright. “He moved here and built this place. Luke visited, once, before he died. Mom refused. The rumors caught up with him here. Four loggers vanished once and people blamed him. There was no evidence.” Kylo shrugged. “Luke said that the locals thought Grandfather talked to wolves up here.”</p><p>Hux didn’t laugh -- he didn’t think he could make himself laugh in this moment even if Kylo wanted him to. He smiled wanly, though. He was repulsed by the cloak Kylo found, and unsettled by his story and the manner in which he told it. “There aren’t any wolves up here.” He thought of the animal room. “Not any live ones, anyway.”</p><p>“It must have been coyotes, then.”</p><p>“Yes, that’s perfectly reasonable. He must have been talking to coyotes.” Hux saw Kylo’s pouty look and softened his voice. “Let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted. Please?” The last word sounded almost like begging, which made his face heat.</p><p>“Exhausted, hm? I’ll carry you.” Kylo made good on that threat, his dark eyes too bright. They burned black in the night-gloom of the house.</p><p>Kylo deposited him directly into bed and Hux scarcely rested an instant there before Kylo was pulling his clothes off. They made fierce love that night. It started slow, Kylo curling up behind him and holding him fast with one hand on his chest while the other opened him up, fingers pushing inside him in long, maddening strokes. Hux wondered briefly whether they needed more lube the next time he left the manse and decided that the answer was yes no matter the status of their current bottle, and then Kylo replaced his fingers with his cock and all of Hux’s thoughts shorted out except for <em> more </em> and <em> yes </em>.</p><p>Kylo rolled them over so that Hux was on his stomach and then pinned him there, big hands locked around his hips and powerful thighs straddling him, and began to drive himself deeper. His thrusts were steady at first, then frantic. <em> Like animals </em>. Hux drooled onto the sheets, moaning against his will, more loudly than he usually did. Loud was supposed to be Kylo’s purview. He felt his face go hot. It would be red if there were any light but the moon in the room. The moon silvered everything, and for that Hux was glad. “Kylo,” Hux gasped, part pleasure and part warning, because his knee was starting to flare up, but his warning went unheeded and he didn’t get a chance at a second one. Words were lost to him in ragged breaths and involuntary moans. Kylo had never fucked him so roughly before, even when they’d been angry with each other. It was overwhelming to be used like this. Used, that’s what it was; he was pinned so well he couldn’t move, his only option to take what he was given. And Kylo gave. Hux felt almost split in two, the heavy drag of Kylo inside him pushing past definition, outside of both pain and pleasure. His orgasm registered as a spasm in his left thigh and unpleasant wetness between the sheets and his stomach, but the ecstasy of it was lost in the white-hot agony shooting up and down his leg. Kylo came with a shout, spearing him deep and shuddering there, and then rolled off to the side. He placed a sloppy kiss on Hux’s shoulder and then was asleep and snoring softly in seconds. He hadn’t even made any effort toward cleaning up.</p><p>Hux lay for a time with his hand tangled in Kylo’s hair, looking into the shadowed corners of the room. It was cold. The glass of the window was beginning to frost as the moon reached its apex. They hadn’t lit a fire before bed and Hux realized he didn’t know how to do it. A wolf howled outside and Hux flinched, his heart pounding. He felt potent dread all the way to his bones, dread going back through human bloodlines to the cave times. He crept out of bed, limping from more than his bum knee, and donned Kylo’s robe -- it was fleece-lined, his own was satin. It would be practically useless here in a few weeks. He ought to get another before winter snows shut down the roads. He ought to get a lot of things, he’d make a list….</p><p>He grabbed one of the bottles of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes from the kitchen and returned to the study where the coals in the hearth were still warm. He brought a glass, too, but the glass was only a formality. He poured himself a finger and took it down in one bolt and then poured again, three fingers this time to drink down slower. His throat and chest warmed nicely. His feet were ice cold. He moved them toward the fireplace, leaning back on the couch. His eyes fell on the cloak, hunched on its chair like a living thing. He wanted to move it out of sight, but didn’t want to touch it. He looked out the window instead.</p><p>Thin clouds swept fast across the sky with the northern winds, occasionally passing over the moon and causing clawed fingers of shadow to pass over the silvery landscape of mountain edges, boulders, and trees. Navy pine, purplish aspen. The night robbed the leaves of vibrancy. Skywalker Manse was a flickering candle in a rift of darkness. The immensity of the wild intimidated Hux. He felt that he and Kylo were unwelcome. Perhaps Anakin Skywalker had been too, and persisted anyway like a tiny splinter dug too deep to pull out, because he’d been too strange for the places people ought to be.</p><p><em> Not just strange. Dangerous </em>. At least one body was laid at the man’s feet in his lifetime, to hear Kylo tell it. His own bloody wife.</p><p>For just a moment Hux missed his old life. Not Seattle -- he missed that city when the sun was up. Under the cold light of the moon and stars with whiskey warming his innards, Hux missed Brendol. He missed his gilded cage.</p><p>“I’m not a whipped dog,” Hux muttered to himself, angry at this lapse back into his old pattern of thinking. <em> No, I’m not. I’m a rabid cur, no more fit for society than Skywalker </em>.</p><p>Hux finished his glass and took his next pull directly from the bottle, and mused over his life. Perhaps he’d doomed himself to his fate with his actions in London. His tumble down the commune staircase was a poor repercussion, though. Truly, a banged-up knee was nothing. And now he found himself isolated in the Rockies, just like Kylo’s fabled murderer of a grandfather. Not isolated, Hux amended. He had Kylo. He couldn’t imagine being in this place with no one. He’d go mad. The wolf outside howled again, and this time a second joined it. The beasts sounded much closer than before. Hux pictured them circling the lodge. He wondered if the wildlife could smell him and Kylo. Surely they could. He wondered if a wolf’s eyesight was keen enough to see him through the window. Hux, drunk and favoring one leg. Weak.</p><p><em> I’m not weak </em>.</p><p>Oh, but he didn’t believe that. He believed Kylo’s fantasies more than he believed that. He wanted a cigarette. Hux put the bottle aside, momentarily shocked at how little was left in it, and fumbled the pack of reds open. He reached a hand into his pocket and realized his lighter was still in his own robe. He didn’t want to go back into the bedroom. If he woke Kylo, Kylo would want to kiss him and then he’d smell the whiskey on Hux’s breath and demand to see the bottle. There was hardly a glass left in it.</p><p><em> He’ll check the bottles in the morning anyway </em>, provided Hux’s brain.</p><p><em> There’s tea in the pantry. I’ll brew tea and fill the bottle back up </em>. But it might not turn out the same color, and Hux would rather die than go down into the cellar. He’d just have to face the music if Kylo thought to check the whiskey bottles.</p><p><em> Maybe he won’t. Maybe he trusts you </em>. That thought cut deepest of all. Hux pulled a cigarette out of the pack and then stumbled to his feet and knelt in front of the hearth. He grabbed the poker and turned the coals over until a flare of bright red-orange came, and then held the cigarette there and brought it quickly to his lips, puffing on it until it was lit solidly.</p><p>Acrid smoke filled his lungs, sharp. He felt more awake. The nicotine and alcohol mingled and did their jobs -- he felt relaxed but not sluggish. Hux blew out a line of blue smoke with something approaching an ecstatic sigh. God, he could smoke the whole pack. He wouldn’t, to make up for the downed bottle. He was still in control.</p><p>Hux got up and went to the windowpane, looking out at the trees and their velvet night-shadows. He should have brought the bottle. He smoked furiously and waited for another howl. The brush moved at the edge of the stone courtyard, and Hux leaned toward the glass, his eyes going wide. He <em> thought </em> he saw….</p><p>Kylo’s arms encircled him. Kylo nibbled at his neck. Hux cried out -- shrieked, if he was honest -- and grabbed Kylo’s wrist with his free hand before he registered who it was.</p><p>“Shit,” he said, sagging against Kylo as his fright left him. “<em> Fuck </em> . You scared me, you…” Hux couldn’t think of a word bad enough, and sputtered, eventually landing on, “You <em> ass </em>.” Kylo laughed against his skin and kissed his neck, swiping his tongue on the spot after.</p><p>The floor in the old house creaked horribly. Kylo even made a nuisance of himself doing a squeaky dance across this room just after they moved in, but Hux hadn’t heard him cross the room now. Not a single sound. Still, Hux was glad to have Kylo here with him. All troubles, including the shame of the bottle, seemed miniscule compared to the comfort of Kylo pressed up against his body. Hux’s fear of this place and its creatures faded.</p><p>“Did you hear the wolves?”</p><p>“Coyotes, you mean.”</p><p>“Yes. Coyotes. Either way, it was spooky. Howling on the moors, you know.”</p><p>“There aren’t moors here.”</p><p>“You know what I mean. Mmm,” Hux tilted his head to give Kylo better access as Kylo sucked a bruise into his flesh. The next puff of his cigarette made an orange circle float in the window, illuminating dim and fuzzy reflections of his and Kylo’s faces, Kylo’s mouth sealed on his neck like a vampire.</p><p>Kylo pulled off. “Come back to bed. It’s chilly. You took my robe.”</p><p>Hux realized Kylo was nude. “All right. Yes. Let me…” he tossed his cigarette butt into the hearth.</p><p>Snug under their blankets and tangled up with each other, Hux was starting to drift off when Kylo’s voice, blank and dreamy, wormed its way into his brain. “Coyotes are scarier than wolves. Sneaky beasts. Won’t leave a scrap. Lick all the blood up.”</p><p>“What?” Hux said. Kylo didn’t elaborate. He was asleep.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Painting was its own sort of trance. He had an easel set up in his ‘studio’ and a new canvas ready to go. Hux left his phone on his painting tray playing classical music softly. He favored the darker, stormier tunes while he worked, which anyone who saw the finished product would find funny. He invariably painted precise and intricate geometric patterns, not a line out of place. The end design belied the work that went into it. He’d had buyers gratingly exclaim that something like this could be printed -- he still couldn’t work out whether that particular vein of feedback was compliment or insult. He knew that the meticulous, clean edges of his designs made them look simplistic at first glance and that he might sell more if he could bear to step outside of habit, but he couldn’t. Fast-drying acrylics would have been better for his art style, but he preferred the feel and color payout of oils, and money was no object.</p><p>Hux used his studio time almost as meditation. The pattern was straightforward and he’d complete it while his brain occupied itself with other things. Chief on his mind today was the bombshell Kylo had dropped on him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in the house anymore.</p><p>
  <em> Hypocrite. </em>
</p><p>Maybe so. It had been intolerable, his life with his father, and the only possible end was death. For one of them or both. It had looked like an accident. Brendol was just as fond of whiskey as Hux. It ran in their blood. He didn’t need much coaxing to drink himself into a stupor that fateful night, and then all it took was the gentlest push. The Huxes’ stairs were considerably steeper and longer than the ones at the Seattle commune. Brendol’s neck broke in two places, his head bent at an impossible angle. Hux cried crocodile tears for the police. It might have looked worse if there’d been a history of domestic violence calls, but there wasn’t. He’d never called for help before, and he’d never need to.</p><p>But his own crime had been driven by necessity. Revenge was only a byproduct -- Brendol would have hurt him beyond repair eventually, and Hux couldn’t leave without losing his inheritance, akin to losing his life. It hadn’t been greed, exactly. It was protection. Wealth insulated the soul from a cruel world. Without it he’d have been stuck in a dead-end office job, too exhausted to paint upon returning home. Or maybe he’d have joined the military. He’d considered that route before, but he had a bit of a problem with authority. Namely that anyone else having it was a problem.</p><p>The light of the day shifted, a cloud covering the sun, and Hux blinked, coming back to himself. A muddled horror stared back at him in place of the pattern he’d started. It was an oil-slick of bruise colors just like the wallpaper. It could have been a forest, or a mountain range, but if so it was burning. Bloody red turned it into an abomination from hell. Hux choked out a breath and looked at his paint tray.</p><p>Entrails tangled there, leaking onto his glass palette, and he screamed, bolting up out of his chair. His back and palms smacked into the wall before he realized his palette wasn’t swimming with gore -- it was paint, the colors on the canvas all tangled together in paint-ropes instead of in neatly separated portions. His hands pulled away from the wall sticky. He’d been fingerpainting. He looked at them in mute panic. He’d have to scrub them with gamsol to get the oils off, and even then they’d be stained for a week or more. Kylo would notice.</p><p>He fumbled with his jar of solvent, wetting a rag and scrubbing his hands furiously, leaving purplish-gray handprints on everything. They were on his clothes, on the wall, the table he set his tray on. They’d never come out of any of it. Hot tears rolled down his face. He couldn’t look at the canvas without shuddering. Even in the abstract nothing it truly was, there were velvety shadows that seemed to have eyes.</p><p>“Hux?”</p><p>Hux whipped his head up like he’d just been caught with his pants down. Kylo leaned against the doorframe, looking unperturbed about the mess. “Yes?” Hux asked, feeling a fresh round of tears fall and only remembering at the last second that he couldn’t wipe his face without staining it.</p><p>Kylo crossed the room and put his big hands on Hux’s cheeks, swiping away his tears with his thumbs. “I thought we might walk to the lake. It’s a hike but the weather’s nice out,” he rumbled.</p><p>“Okay. Yes.” Hux said. “Just let me….” He scrubbed his hands harder, though nothing short of skinning them would remove the whisper at the back of the skull asking him if he was quite sure that Kylo’s relations were the insane ones here.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Hux opted for a gray sweater, hoping any residual paint wouldn’t show if he happened to brush his hands against himself unconsciously. He’d stolen a nip out of the bottle before they left, as Kylo was lacing up his boots, but the burn of it was now worn off and the breeze was chilly. The lake was beautiful: cold blue water holding ghost images of the trees that bordered it. Blue lake, orange leaves, gray sky. Pretty as a painting. <em> Except that some paintings are too ugly for words </em>. Kylo brought a thermos of coffee, and they passed it back and forth, taking sips. It was getting cold enough now that Hux would need his coat during the day soon. He could have benefitted from wearing his leather gloves, but he didn’t want to dirty them. He rubbed his hands together to warm them instead. They were still faintly gray. Corpse hands.</p><p>Kylo’s phone chimed.</p><p>“You have service here?” Hux asked, amused. Kylo didn’t check it and Hux’s curiosity grew. “Who is it?”</p><p>Kylo sighed and fished his phone out of his jacket, squinting at the screen. “Rey.”</p><p>“Rey…?”</p><p>“My baby cousin.”</p><p>“Oh, yes.”</p><p>Kylo tapped out a response and sent it, and then immediately got a FaceTime request. He grunted in displeasure, his thumb hovering over the decline option.</p><p>“Answer it,” Hux prompted, raising his eyebrows as if to say <em> What is there to lose? </em> Kylo did take calls from his cousin, though he’d always left the room to do so back in Seattle and he’d spoken in hushed tones, headphones in to fast-track her voice to his ears only. Hux was more than a bit excited about this opportunity to snoop.</p><p>Kylo did answer, and the face on the other end of the line had a smile that was blinding in its open friendliness. She was a pretty young woman, maybe just entering college. Big bright eyes like Kylo’s, and a pert nose. She had her brunette hair pulled back but wisps had come free around her ears. “Ben!” She cried, and Kylo winced.</p><p>Hux was dumbstruck. <em> Ben? </em> Somehow he’d thought that Kylo’s deadname might be something stranger. He’d have liked to be saddled with something as normal as Ben. Walking through the first two decades of his life as <em> Armitage </em> had been dreadful. <em> If you were Kylo, you’d have just changed it </em> . Hux thought about that a moment. <em> I did change it, sort of </em>. He’d insisted on going by his last name once he started uni. Hux smiled to himself and looked out at the placid surface of the lake as they walked along, Kylo becoming more and more flustered as his cousin chattered at him energetically, practically quizzing him on his life and work and art. She asked where he was and Kylo gave a noncommittal answer, Hux noted.</p><p>“Are you with your boyfriend?”</p><p>Hux’s face twisted to Kylo automatically -- <em> you told her about me? </em> Then, <em> Boyfriend? </em></p><p>“Uh, yeah,” said Kylo, his eyes glancing back at Hux.</p><p>“Oh my God is he <em> there? </em> Hey Boyfriend! Show him to me!” Rey demanded.</p><p>Kylo cast apologetic eyes at Hux and Hux leaned in beside him so that he was in the frame. “Don’t screenshot this,” Kylo said moodily.</p><p>“Too late,” she laughed, and Kylo groaned. “Hey, when are you gonna come visit again? It’s been <em> years </em>.”</p><p>It had been -- Hux remembered that Kylo took one trip home in the time that they’d known each other, about a year into their relationship, and he’d only visited his cousin then. He’d complained when he returned that she tried to help his parents ambush him. Even in his ire Hux had been able to tell Kylo loved her too much to stay angry, and now that he could see and hear her he understood why. She was without guile. Kind-hearted.</p><p>“Well?” Rey chirped. “I’ve got an extra room now, you won’t even have to sleep on a couch with your huge feet hanging off.” She drank from a Starbucks cup.</p><p>“Never.”</p><p>“<em> Ben! </em> Come on, it’ll be fun. Bring Boyfriend.”</p><p>“Maybe next year. Okay, well, I’m going to get back to our scenic walk. With no more <em> phone </em>. Bye.” Kylo griped.</p><p>“Whatever,” said Rey, and hung up. The silence of the woods and the lake prevailed again, suddenly jarring in contrast with the phone call. It seemed like something from another universe, that glimpse into Rey’s life.</p><p>“Stop that,” Kylo said.</p><p>“What?” Hux asked innocently.</p><p>“Smirking. She probably took hundreds of screenshots. She’ll send them all to Mom and Dad.”</p><p>“You don’t want them to see you?”</p><p>“Well, no.” Kylo said. “But I was thinking more of you. They shouldn’t have the privilege.”</p><p>Hux considered that mutely. Of the two of them, Kylo was the more successful in both acclaim and earnings. The more attractive, too, if Hux did say so himself. Both those things stung in the beginning, the hurt of it faded once it became apparent that Kylo was irrevocably his.</p><p>“Where <em> do </em> you want to go?” Hux asked, rubbing his hands together again.</p><p>“Hm?” Kylo reached over and took his hands, warming them with his own. The contact felt funny after scrubbing himself with solvent.</p><p>“After this.” Kylo stilled and looked at Hux blankly, and so Hux forged on. “After the trial. I mean, he may never see the inside of a jail, but we don’t have to stay here forever. I was thinking--”</p><p>“You don’t like it?”</p><p>Hux’s pitch about taking Kylo to London died in his throat. Kylo looked extremely wounded. Hux’s insides twisted with aggravation. What was there to <em> like </em> about the godforsaken place? Why should it be a personal affront to Kylo that he didn’t particularly appreciate living in a goddamn museum of one man’s neuroses? But it obviously was.</p><p>Hux tried to be diplomatic. “I just thought that I could show you where <em> I’m </em> from.” Not that Kylo was from here, but he was certainly acting like he was.</p><p>Kylo scoffed and dropped his hands, moving on.</p><p>“What?” Hux called after him, his voice sharp.</p><p>“Nothing,” said Kylo. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”</p><p>It was the old push and pull, rearing its head again. Hux wasn’t the only one of them that feared a cage. He tried to dredge up understanding -- how would he feel if his lover wanted to take him off to their home country and he had less than an eighteenth of their wealth? The understanding wilted and died under the heat of his rage. He was not his father. How dare Kylo act as though Hux wanted to manage every aspect of their lives.</p><p>
  <em> Don’t you? </em>
</p><p>No more than Kylo did. And right now, Hux was trapped in Kylo’s choice of unnerving estate. Alone, except for Kylo, which had gone surprisingly well thus far. If they started to really fight out here there’d be no interruptions to aid them in forgiveness. Kylo knew the ghosts in the house, Kylo knew how to work the fireplaces, Kylo was strong enough to chop firewood, Kylo could take the car keys and Hux would be completely at his mercy, but Hux suggested <em> once </em> that they change up their scenery and now he was the bad guy.</p><p>Hux jogged after Kylo, matching his long strides. “You don’t honestly expect us to live here?” He barked, and Kylo whirled around, his face furious.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>Hux looked around, raising his arms. “There’s nothing out here.”</p><p>Kylo laughed meanly. “Yeah, you have to drive for your booze. Sorry.”</p><p>Hux’s mouth fell open, and Kylo’s face softened immediately. “Hux...Jesus, I’m--”</p><p>“No,” Hux batted away Kylo’s reaching hands. “<em> No </em> . Fuck off. He was angry with <em> you </em>to begin with.”</p><p>Kylo came up short at the mention of Snoke.</p><p>“You threw a fit over something he said about your damn photos and then he <em> broke my knee </em> . I’ll need a fucking cane by my forties. This is all your fault to begin with,” Hux snarled. Kylo blanched, going white. The darker parts of Hux liked to see it. They crowed with victory. “So what if I’ve been drinking. I’m not taking any pain medication, and it <em> does </em> hurt. If you’d forgotten.”</p><p>“I thought I’d never see this place again,” Kylo said. He was starting to breathe hard and go pink in the face. Soon he’d be yelling.</p><p>“I wish you hadn’t,” Hux spat at him. “You’re acting like you’re <em> mad </em>. I wish you’d never told me that shit about Skywalker. It’s a fucking nightmare!”</p><p>Kylo grabbed him, his grip painful on Hux’s shoulders. Hux stumbled back and his knee throbbed. He yelped and Kylo released him immediately, his anger draining out in seconds as if Hux had pulled the plug from the sink.</p><p>Hux gave him a withering look and then turned on his heel to walk back. Kylo tailed him the whole way, unspeaking. When they were home Kylo went to bed. Hux sat in the kitchen and finished the second bottle of whiskey and smoked a pack and a half. The world went dark outside, the wind picking up. When the wolves -- or coyotes -- started to howl, Hux considered walking out and tilting his head up at the moon and joining them.</p><p>Instead he finished the cigarette in his hand and then stubbed out the butt and went to the bedroom. He pissed with the door open and heard Kylo snort in annoyance and shift in bed, pulling his pillow over his face. Hux washed his hands methodologically, looking at the purple-gray stains on them in extreme distaste, brushed his teeth, and then undressed and crawled into bed. He removed Kylo’s pillow from his face and looked down into his furious eyes.</p><p>“You smell like smoke,” Kylo said. Hux rubbed his face against Kylo’s and spoke directly into his overlarge ear.</p><p>“It’s probably my hair.”</p><p>Kylo snorted again, but it was infinitesimally less angry, and his arms wrapped around Hux. Hux settled half on top of him, laying his head on Kylo’s shoulder. “Are you drunk?” Kylo’s voice rumbled below him.</p><p>Hux hummed an affirmative, and Kylo’s chest started to shake. Hux watched the clouds float by outside and the pinpoints of the cold starts wink between them, and then his muddled brain realized Kylo was crying.</p><p>“Don’t be so pathetic,” Hux slurred.</p><p>“Shut up,” Kylo wept.</p><p>“Meant m’self.”</p><p>Kylo’s grip tightened, and his body shook harder. Hux forgot it by the morning.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>On a morning following a less tumultuous night weeks later, a man knocked on the door. He was young, younger than Kylo. And not as big, but only because no one was. He had the look of an off-duty cop. The same build: overly muscled for the faded bluejeans he was wearing, and his shoes were tactical. His t-shirt read <em> University of Denver </em> and had a faded emblem on it. He had on a red jacket with shiny plastic on the arms, material that looked better suited to a cheap purse, and a red flat cap. These were incongruous with the rest of his outfit. The complete picture was absurd. He smiled, and his face was disarming. With a smile, he certainly looked no older than a uni student. Just a kid.</p><p>“I’m sorry to disturb you sir, but I’m a bit lost.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and snicked his lighter open. Once he’d lit one, smoke drifting over into Hux’s face, he offered the pack. It was strangely mesmerizing. He introduced himself as Lee Yang.</p><p>Hux had panicked upon hearing a knock at the door. Kylo was out for a walk, and Hux had considered not answering the door at all, but then what? Could he be sure the person left? Would they go around to the windows? The lights were on and the radio too; the kitchen window was cracked, the music would be audible outside. So he’d given himself a pep talk and swung the door open; it was unlikely that Snoke had tracked them down, and if he had he wouldn’t have come himself, and if he had then there was nothing to do but face it.</p><p>Hux invited Lee in for coffee. He poured two mugs, grabbing them at random out of the cabinet, and then started when he realized they were labeled Luke and Leia. The Leia mug would be unused, then. He wondered with a strange feeling of unbelonging whether Luke had sipped from this mug when he visited his ailing father, and then dismissed the train of thought. He had a guest to attend to.</p><p>Hux spread one of their maps out on the table and got a pen, ready to mark it up. Lee blinked at him, obviously not expecting this level of thoroughness. “What’s your destination?” Hux asked.</p><p>“Oh, there’s a campground. I’m meeting my friends.” Lee glanced at the map and then back up. “Stranger Creek.”</p><p>That was twenty miles away -- Lee was <em> far </em> off course. Except that he wasn’t. Hux was more and more sure of that. He circled the campground on the map and his hand twitched to draw a line from the house to it, and then he stilled. He wouldn’t be marking the house on the map. Not that it made a difference if they were already found, but he didn’t have to write Snoke directions and seal the envelope with a kiss.</p><p>“Thank God I came across your place,” Lee gave him another sunny smile. “There’s no signs out here, and these roads go on forever.” He puffed his cigarette. To Hux, the movement looked unpracticed. Lee was looking around the room, not glancing but looking slowly. Weighing everything he saw. Probably Snoke would want a full report. “And thanks for the coffee. You make a good cup. You’re off the beaten path. You stay up here full time?”</p><p>“We’re private people,” Hux smiled thinly. “My husband dislikes visitors.” He hadn’t thought the words before he said them, they just materialized. They didn’t feel like a lie. Hux hadn’t seen another car outside, he thought now. The kid had parked on the road below next to the driveway that didn’t look like a driveway and walked up. It was why Hux hadn’t had any warning before the knock to make the place look empty.</p><p>“Oh,” Lee said again, not looking as uncomfortable as he should in the face of hostility.</p><p><em> Because he was prepared for it </em>. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Yang?” Hux asked.</p><p>“No. No, I’ll be on my way. I don’t want to get you in trouble with your, er, husband.”</p><p>Did he trip on the word because he was a bigot, or because he was a spy who knew better? Hux kept smiling at him, all the way to the door.</p><p>Once the kid had picked his way back down the rutted lane, waving back jauntily once, and Hux had closed and bolted the door, he took a shower. He stayed under the water longer than he should. He didn’t think Kylo had taken one before his walk, and Hux should save him some hot water. But Hux found that he was trembling. They’d fled the world, but the world would be coming to Skywalker Manse soon. He didn’t know if he was shaking with fear or relief.</p><p>After his shower he pulled on a cozy green sweater and jeans. He made more coffee, and then toast too because he’d be jittery if he drank two cups with nothing else in his system besides nicotine. The kid had offered him a Marlboro red. Snoke must have specified the brand. The cigarette butts were still in the ashtray on the table, one on each end of it instead of side by side. Hux wildly considered moving Lee’s around to his side and not telling Kylo at all. He felt complicit.</p><p>Instead he left it where it was, a clear sign of intrusion, and sat at the table eating his toast and reading one of the battered paperbacks he’d bought on a grocery outing. Out the window, he glimpsed movement near the treeline that made him jump. It was only Kylo coming back from his walk, but for an instant Hux had thought he was some huge beast. He was wearing the cloak with the hood up, and pulled it down now. His expression was strange; he didn’t look like himself. He shuddered like a person coming out of a trance in a horror movie and then his face was his own. Hux could put the difference into words after seeing the transformation; Kylo’s face was expressive to a fault. Before he’d shuddered it had been blank and stiff, as if he were wearing his own face as a mask.</p><p>Kylo came inside. He’d removed the cloak before entering the kitchen. It was probably back on its chair, lounging there like a pet. His hair was messy, his face flushed from the morning chill.</p><p>“Who was here?” Kylo asked immediately. His voice rasped as if he’d been talking nonstop since he went out. It wasn’t unpleasant sounding.</p><p>“A kid looking for a campground,” Hux said, bristling. It wasn’t his fault. Kylo should have been here. He wanted another cigarette. He didn’t mention what he’d witnessed out the window -- it was too unnerving. He didn’t think he could ask about the cloak without turning it into an accusation. Never mind that Kylo was accusing him of-- of what? Stupidity, maybe. Hux wasn’t stupid -- he knew the kid was Snoke’s. He’d known it the moment he heard the knock, but what could he do? Kylo should have been here.</p><p>Kylo didn’t ask anything else about the kid. “You brought a gun? At least one?”</p><p>Hux nodded. He had one pistol with him. The sort without a serial number. He’d sourced it from an ex-military gentleman and paid for it under the table. “Two boxes of shells.” There might be more that would work in the gun study. Hux would check. He almost laughed at that thought. If two boxes of shells couldn’t protect them, nothing could.</p><p>“You’ve only paid cash? No debit or credit, just like we decided?” Kylo asked.</p><p>Hux glared at him. “I’m not an imbecile. I didn’t give him my name. I didn’t tell him anything. The radio was on. Should I not have answered the door at all? Stuck my gun in his face?”</p><p>Kylo snorted. “Maybe, yeah. The campgrounds are closed.”</p><p>“I didn’t say I <em> believed </em>--”</p><p>“I was outside while he gave you his entry speech. Went down to the road and then back around through the woods. Kid came in a panel van. There was another man behind the wheel. Dark sunglasses and a beard, didn’t get a good look at him. Same red getup.” Kylo said.</p><p>Hux was speechless. And betrayed. The betrayal brought the words forth. “You were here and you just <em> left me </em> with him?”</p><p>“You handled him well. Snoke has got entirely too much money. Come on, I want to show you something. Bring your gun.”</p><p>Kylo had set up targets in the courtyard. Wide wooden boards from one shed or another with three targets drawn on, pressed into the dirt bank near the fire pit.</p><p>“I’m not out of practice,” Hux seethed.</p><p>“Humor me.”</p><p>Hux loaded his pistol and aimed, sinking immediately into the correct stance. It came more naturally than breathing. Time seemed to slow when he put his finger on the trigger. He pulled it between heartbeats. <em> Pop, pop, pop </em>. Three bullseyes drilled into the boards. Hux imagined three black holes drilled into Snoke’s face, and then felt as though he was standing off balance.</p><p>What were they going to do, kill anyone who showed up here? Normal people didn’t solve their problems with cold-blooded murder.</p><p><em> Then you stopped being normal nine years ago </em>. Hux released a shaky breath and lowered the gun. “Satisfied?”</p><p>“Very.” Kylo slid a hand into Hux’s back pocket, squeezing him. “Keep it on you, yeah?”</p><p><em> This is insane. He’s insane. I’m INSANE </em>.</p><p>“I will.”</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Hux knew what Kylo was going to ask before he did it. It was the look on his face. “Absolutely not. I haven’t had a haircut. I’m a mess.”</p><p>“I like it. No one sees them anyway.”</p><p>That was a part of the deal: Kylo didn’t publish the photographs he took of Hux. He’d complained bitterly about it on one occasion before, insisting that a black and white portrait of Hux in one of Kylo’s jean jackets was his best work. It had been a big fight. Hux objected aloud on the grounds that he didn’t want his face used as a passive subject in someone -- <em> anyone </em> -- else’s art. His true objection was the frightening thought that his image would outsell his own work, and the grappling he’d have to do to come to terms with that inevitable outcome. It <em> was </em> a good photo. In the end Kylo had deleted it, and then cried over it, and then Hux had dragged him into bed and fucked him stupid to stop the dramatics.</p><p>Hux sighed and hopped up from where he’d been reclining, leafing through a book he’d read three times before. At least a photo session was a break from routine. He followed Kylo back to his makeshift photography studio and sat where he was directed, posing on a blue antique couch.</p><p>Kylo snapped a few pictures and then told Hux to remove his sweater. Hux ran a hand over the offwhite cable knit, frowning. “I’m not doing nudes right now. I’ll have red marks on me from my jeans. It would be awful.”</p><p>“You won’t be nude. Come on.”</p><p>Hux heaved a sigh and undressed, folding his clothes neatly beside the camera tripod. When he was naked, his flesh pebbling up in goosebumps from the chill of the room, he sat back on the velvet of the couch and waited patiently for whatever scheme Kylo concocted this time. Lace? A repurposed curtain? A potted plant? Nothing could be worse than the time Kylo had sat him in a windowsill with an overturned teapot cupping his junk. Kylo ducked down to rummage through his equipment and pulled out a bundle of fabric that Hux knew at once.</p><p>“No,” Hux said immediately, looking at the rolled-up cloak.</p><p>“It’s been washed seven--”</p><p>“I don’t care. I don’t want it on me.” Hux’s heart pounded, beating hard in his chest. He thought that Kylo surely must hear it from where he stood.</p><p>“Hux--”</p><p>“I said no, god damn you.” Hux shrank away from Kylo’s outstretched offering, aware that he was being just as childish as he often accused Kylo of being. But he didn’t want that fabric on his naked skin. The irrational thought that it would change him somehow arrived and then set up shop in his brain. He wished he’d let Kylo take the car that day. He wished they’d never come here. He wished he’d worked harder at convincing Kylo to leave the commune before everything went sour. <em> If wishes were diamonds I’d be a billionaire </em>.</p><p>“You’d look good in black,” Kylo said offhand, but he relented for now and cast around for something else. Hux posed the rest of the session bunching a threadbare woven green blanket over himself, which he knew made for mediocre pictures without even seeing them. At least it was practice. He could tell instantly when Kylo stopped paying attention to the photos, and was not surprised in the slightest when Kylo lunged and grabbed him.</p><p>“If you wanted to have sex--<em> Christ </em>,” Hux closed his eyes, letting Kylo hold him down on the couch and suck at the head of his cock. He’d been at half-mast starting five minutes past when Kylo looked at him more than the digital display on his camera, and his prick hardened completely now.</p><p>“Wanted both,” Kylo murmured when he pulled off, and then returned to task, alternating teasing licks with suction that made Hux’s toes curl. Hux moaned, burying his fingers in Kylo’s hair. Kylo’s hands splayed on his chest and stomach, the fingertips of his right hand rubbing Hux’s nipples to attention.</p><p>Hux closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, resting it on the couch and simply letting Kylo work him toward release. His eyes cracked open when Kylo hummed around him, and he started, jumping almost imperceptibly. For only an instant he’d thought the snarling black wolf had been transported from the taxidermy study to this room, but it was only the blasted cloak huddled in the corner.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Kylo brought Hux to the clearing in the woods, and the stand of trees at one end where the hunter’s blind was. The boards squeaked in the wind. Hux didn’t want to climb to it, and was relieved that Kylo didn’t offer to boost him up. The bloody sun fell and the moon rose, almost as bloody. It looked like a twin sunset.</p><p>“Beautiful,” Kylo said, looking at it. “I’ve been having strange dreams.”</p><p>Hux lit himself a cigarette. His dreams had been troubled too, but he didn’t want to talk about them. He reflected dimly on their differences. He was perhaps repression incarnate. He at least got points for knowing it about himself, right? Kylo wouldn’t know restraint if it bit him.</p><p>“I spoke to my grandfather.”</p><p>Hux pulled himself out of reverie. “Oh?”</p><p>Kylo relaxed subtly, seeing that Hux would allow him to proceed without mockery. “It was winter. There was snow outside, and ice on the windows. There was a big fire crackling in the sword room, and he was in the chair.”</p><p><em> Like the cloak </em>.</p><p>“I don’t remember all of it,” Kylo made a face as though that pained him. “He told me stuff. How to do the things he did. The dream jumped around like dreams do. Before it ended we were out here. There was a corpse. I don’t know what kind,” Kylo’s voice changed slightly, and Hux thought, <em> he knows exactly what kind </em>. “Grandfather told me ‘a survivor eats what he can’ and then he leaned down and took a big bite even though the meat was all green and soft.”</p><p>“So it was a message? Adapt or die,” Hux took a deep drag on his cigarette, watching the orange flame reflect in Kylo’s eyes.</p><p>“It’s time to face the inevitable.”</p><p>“Which is?”</p><p>“We’re never going to get away.”</p><p>Hux felt terror jump in his stomach. “Kylo, it’s one man. He’s only a man, and he’s set for trial.” But it didn’t feel that way. Snoke didn’t feel like just a man. Hux thought of his own dreams, of the forest on fire, burning like Hell raised above ground. His knee throbbed and he shifted his weight.</p><p>“We’ll deal with him,” said Kylo, his meaning clear.</p><p><em> No. Not you. You’re better than that </em> . “Don’t be ridiculous.” But what was ridiculous in the sparkling rain-washed lights of Seattle was not so far-fetched here in the big dark beyond reason or rule. “You want to...disappear anyone who comes calling? This isn’t a story, Kylo. We’ll be caught.” <em> I should have said that it’s wrong. The point is that it’s wrong </em>.</p><p>Another voice, closer to his heart: <em> I’m past that. I think he is, too </em>.</p><p>“I saw the van again, parked in the gravel pit down the road. They’re watching us. He’s watching us. We’re not going to bury them in the yard. There are other ways to win. And after Snoke, whatever comes after, we’ll win then too.”</p><p>Hux thought about graveyards. There were many in the mountains, scattered heaps of bones going back generations. Meat-blacked bones turning to dust. Ribs, femurs, horns. Skulls. <em> Bear and deer and hare and </em>...the rhyme was lost to him.</p><p>The walk back home seemed longer. They were two shadows in silvery dead grass, leaves crunching underfoot. They locked themselves inside the house and got ready for bed, and when they were snuggled in together Kylo’s hand found Hux’s belly, stroking there. He was solid behind Hux, thicker than when they arrived here. He’d traded a gym membership for sparring drills with that flashing red sword. Hux watched him at first, but then found it too disquieting. Kylo seemed to jump too high. He’d been strong before, but he was honed now. His hair was longer, brushing his shoulders. He got cuts and scrapes and bruises on his walks, as though they weren’t really walks at all. He even smelled different. Almost gamey. He bit too hard when they made love, savaging Hux, leaving dark bruises behind that took days to yellow. He was the spitting image of the sort of warrior that would wear that horrid cloak.</p><p>Kylo was nuzzling against Hux’s shoulder now, and Hux stiffened, anticipating a bite. “What is it?” Kylo murmured, kissing him softly instead.</p><p>“I’m afraid you’re going to leave,” it came out without thought, like the morning the kid visited. <em> My husband dislikes visitors </em>.</p><p>“Where the fuck is that coming from? Hux--” Kylo pulled him around to face him, kissing his cheek and then his mouth. “Hux, I wouldn’t. Not ever.”</p><p>“Something’s changed,” Hux snapped at him. “You weren’t honest with me about the day you found the cloak.” He wasn’t sure of it until he said it, and then Kylo’s open book of a face confirmed it.</p><p>“Grandfather showed me.”</p><p>“In a dream?”</p><p>“No. I went out for a walk, and a coyote came out of the brush. I followed it. It led me to the blind. I didn’t want to scare you.” His voice hardened, becoming more urgent. “We’re here for a reason. Can’t you feel the power of this place? It’s flowing through you even now. Hux, before I met you I’d decided to kill myself. I had the pills. I needed a place to do it.”</p><p>“Stop,” Hux said, and it came out a whisper. He blinked and hot tears spilled down his face.</p><p>“You told me to ‘be careful’ when I bumped into you in the hall, you looked at me like I was dirt. Love at first sight,” Kylo joked, except it wasn’t a joke. Not really. “I won’t leave you. It’s possible you’d try to leave me, but I won’t let you. We’re past that. Aren’t we?”</p><p>Hux nodded numbly. Sometime in the interim of five years they’d bound themselves together so thoroughly that there was no slipping free without breaking a joint, and Hux had no intention of having that experience again. He couldn’t imagine life now without Kylo. It would be colorless, pain and pleasure both forgotten. He’d sink back into the bottle and stay until he drowned there. Hux had traded Brendol for something infinitely more dangerous, and he’d never break free this time because he loved Kylo. He knew that now. But the rabid cur protested, whining for its freedom. “And what if I tried?” He asked.</p><p>Kylo’s hand gripped his throat and pulled him into a rough kiss. It was answer enough. Kylo rode him that night, strong thighs flexing, skin silver in the moonlight, his head thrown back and his mouth open and soft. Hux always tired before they finished when he was on top like this and Kylo spurred him on, taking his hips in hand and moving him up and down manually or flipping them over to rut to completion, but Kylo’s body had more distant limitations. He rocked tirelessly, fucking himself onto Hux’s cock in the way they both liked best, his own erection bobbing with his movements, flushed purple in the dark of the room and leaking onto Hux’s stomach. Hux took him in hand and stroked, feeling his own orgasm build. His knee was quiet and unobtrusive tonight, a mercy. Kylo cried out and painted Hux’s chest white, his body clenching around Hux, and Hux followed him over the edge with a bitten-off grunt.</p><p>Hux cleaned himself with a washrag this time before settling in for the night. There was only so much he could stand, and the line was somewhere before sleeping with Kylo’s spunk going crusty on his skin. Kylo was content to stew in sweat and musk, and forced it on Hux by proxy because close was never close enough for him in bed. Hux drifted off with Kylo’s arms around him and the heat and muscle of his body pressed tight to his back, and then woke when it was still dark out. The bed had gone cold.</p><p>Hux gathered his robe tightly around him (a good one now, warm) and walked through the study on his way out the back door, already knowing what he’d find. Or rather not find: the cloak was gone from the chair. He paused at the door, looking out into the freezing night and thinking about his current resemblance to the doomed heroine in a gothic romance.</p><p><em> No, I should have opted for the satin robe then. It’s better optics </em>. Hux chuckled at his own lunacy and stepped outside. The stone was so cold it almost seemed to burn his feet, and his breath fogged out in front of him. He didn’t call Kylo’s name, and it wasn’t the fear of wolves or coyotes that stopped him.</p><p>He walked through the courtyard toward the dojo, the only space clear of dead and rotting vegetation. He walked near the wall of the manse, trying to camouflage himself. He stopped when he caught sight of Kylo, crouched on the dojo floor under the formless shaggy hide of the cloak. Hux watched as Kylo stirred, whining and shuddering in the grip of something, and then Kylo’s arm extended, and a large rock at the end of the dojo lifted into the air. Kylo strained, grunting, his arm shaking, and then he lost his hold. The rock crashed back to the ground. Hux jumped, but swallowed the scream that rose in his throat.</p><p>Kylo cursed and spat, standing. He stretched and rolled his head back to pop his neck and then seemed to settle back down. He drew the red sword from beneath his cloak, and Hux saw that it was <em> dripping </em> something dark onto the stone, and then started the same training drills he’d run since they arrived. This time Hux was sure that he jumped too high and too far. Kylo leapt from stone pillar to pillar, practically flying. In the light of the moon, the sword seemed to glow. It <em> was </em> glowing. Kylo’s face was lit up by it as strongly as if he stood in front of a red neon sign.</p><p>Kylo landed and then his face twisted toward Hux. He set the blade down. Hux came out from behind the wall, sensing he’d been discovered. Kylo was panting from exertion. The sword was dead now, the blade dark. “Go back to bed,” Kylo said, his voice rusty. He almost sounded drugged. “I’ll join you soon. It’s cold out.” He seemed to wake up fully then. “Your feet are bare. Come on,” He jumped down from the raised floor of the dojo and gathered Hux up, ushering him back toward the house. His cloak smelled singed.</p><p>“Was there a fire?” Hux asked blankly. Then, “You forgot your sword.”</p><p>“I’m coming back for it.”</p><p>Hux pulled back against Kylo’s attempts to guide him forward. “No. Kylo, bring it in and get some sleep.” Kylo seemed about to argue and Hux added. “I can’t sleep without you. It’s cold.”</p><p>Kylo relented, but Hux’s dreams were still troubled.</p><p>He dreamed he ran through the woods, chasing the kid from the van. His stupid red jacket was torn, flapping, and he was keening as he ran, his breath coming in terrified whistles. He tripped at the edge of the gravel pit and crashed down into it in a sprawl instead of the two bounds he’d meant to take. He broke his arm. His mouth was full of shattered teeth and blood, dribbling out black in the night. He raised a hand toward Hux in supplication.</p><p>
  <em> Please I’m just a kid I’m just a dumb punk who thought he’d use his muscle to make some coin, I don’t even know who he is or what he did or why he wanted me to find you please-- </em>
</p><p>Hux raised the pistol in his hand and shot the kid three times, three black holes drilling triangle points into his forehead. The back of his skull exploded out in a rain of gore onto the gravel. Behind him was the paneled van and beside it the embers of a fire still burning down. The bearded man lay eviscerated beside it, a can of Coors light still clutched in one hand, his flesh already gone gray and cold. It had happened sometime before. His entrails spilled out like swirls of paint on a palette. Hux took a breath of frosty air and exhaled fog, and then walked forward and mounted the corpse of the kid, straddling him and leaning down to lick the blood dripping down out of the holes Hux put in his face. Salt-iron on his tongue grounded him. He could smell the leaves and the smoke from the fire and coming ice on the wind. He poked the tip of his tongue into a bullethole.</p><p>A twig snapped. Hux looked up at the approaching beast, but it wasn’t a beast at all. Of course not. Kylo put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him up. Hux felt his body move before he told it to. Somewhere in the woods, something howled. Kylo kissed him deeply, and Hux returned his passion. The remnants of the fire Snoke’s men had meant to guard them from the cold crackled. Hux had his way with Kylo on the ground -- that damned cloak was good for something at last. It was a thick buffer between Kylo’s body and the gravel below. Hux rubbed himself to completion against Kylo’s hard length, spilling into his pants. He realized he was barefoot. Why hadn’t he worn--? But then Kylo moaned and Hux knew Kylo had just finished too. He’d know even if he didn’t see the dark stain on his crotch. Kylo was looking up at him like a man seeing the face of God, dark eyes wide, breathing hard. His lips were bloodied with the life Hux had taken. Hux kissed him again.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Hux woke with a rancid taste in his mouth and stumbled to the bathroom, ducking his head to drink from the tap and spit. It was brown like dark earth. He did it until his spit was clear and then brushed his teeth twice, feeling queasy. He was nude, which was how he’d gone to bed after retrieving Kylo from the dojo. No smoky-smelling sweater and no jeans gone stiff with dried come. He looked at his feet and then cried out in horror. They were sore and banged up, and filthy.</p><p>His heart lurched. <em> Don’t be daft you went out barefoot to get him, you went out </em>--</p><p>
  <em> Yes, onto the stone. Not dirt. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> There’s ivy. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I didn’t step in it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The stone must be dirty. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I didn’t hurt my feet in the courtyard. </em>
</p><p>Hux gagged and dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, but vomit didn’t come. He looked at his own faint reflection in the toilet water and faced the fact that it wasn’t the thought of killing that upset him. It was the loss of control. It was the gap between going to bed and running through the woods.</p><p><em> The gap is there because I was dreaming </em>. Yes, he was. But what had his body done?</p><p>Hux showered and dressed. He thought to check the laundry basket for the clothes he’d dreamed he wore out (<em> out hunting, I was hunting </em>) and found it empty. Kylo must have woken up with the urge to wash their clothes today. How convenient. Autumn rains rattled the windows, sweeping against the house in great cold gusts.</p><p>He went to the kitchen table and poured himself the last of the whiskey, downing it for breakfast. Two glasses. When he set the glass back down the second time he felt watched. Kylo stood in the doorway, staring at him cautiously. Hux looked at him, trying to see anything different in him and coming up empty. He wondered if Kylo saw anything different in him. Hux kissed his cheek on his way out of the room and fetched his coat. It was his turn for a morning walk.</p><p>“Do we have an umbrella?” Kylo called. It was a Hux thing to say.</p><p>“You can warm me up when I get back,” Hux told him, completing the role-reversal.</p><p>There were the charred remains of a fire in the gravel pit and a few crumpled cans of Coors, but no van and no tracks. The gravel seemed to have been shifted around in a few places, kicked over. Hux drug his bootheel over the place where the kid had died and found pieces of rock with black-brown stains. The pit was already filling with rain, cold gray puddles forming. The evidence of the fire would be gone before the hour was. The weight of the pistol in his coat still felt good, Hux found. It might even feel better in his hand.</p><p>There was a huge column of black smoke drifting up from further down the road, and so Hux continued his stroll. A hundred yards further he found the van. It was now a blazing inferno. There were clear tracks in the gravel from where it had taken the curve of the road too fast and crashed down the steep embankment into a boulder far below. One wrong move in these hills and it was all over but the crying. The rain was slowing to drizzle, but even if it had turned torrential Hux doubted anything would be pulled from that wreck that wasn’t charred black and crumbling. No one would be able to tell that the crying had ended long before the van hurtled down this rainy stretch of road. If his lover could lift a rock without touching it, Hux supposed he could drive a car the same way, with enough practice. Kylo sure didn’t fuck around. Then again, neither did Hux. He walked back.</p><p>There was cell service in the entryway, enough to make the call without fussing with the radio. Hux reported the smoke and asked if emergency services would please check it out because it was quite a lot, especially in the wet weather. The house smelled good -- Kylo was cooking.</p><p>“Playing homemaker today?” Hux asked, poking his head into the kitchen. Kylo was humming by the stove, singing just barely off key. It made Hux’s heart ache. He thought that whatever he’d done last night in a dream state, he’d do it again awake to keep this. He thought it loudly, just in case, and Kylo’s melody stuttered. Hux showered to get the chill of rainwater off him and returned to the kitchen fresh-faced just as Kylo was dipping out two servings of some type of cinnamon porridge. He had a jar of honey open on the counter, and spooned out two golden circles of it on top of their meals. Rain tapped icy fingertips on the windowpane.</p><p>Hux echoed it on the table as he ate. Kylo seemed nervous, eyes flicking to him too often. Waiting. That was fine; Kylo could stand to sweat it out for a bit, for the amount of trouble he was.</p><p>Finally, Hux said, “You can take those photos you wanted to, with one adjustment.”</p><p>Kylo’s eyes were bright with hope and love. “Anything.”</p><p><em> My God, I loved you </em> , thought Hux. Did he still? Words didn’t touch them in the same way anymore in this feral place, but it was the closest thing. <em> I love you </em> didn’t feel like a lie. Sticking his bloody tongue into Kylo’s mouth was closer to the truth than any paltry phrase would ever be.</p><p>They made love on top of the cloak, draped over the couch in the sword room. Kylo set up a camera on an automatic timer. The photos were tasteful, zoomed in too far to capture everything. Kylo deleted all but one: his hand clawed around Hux’s hip after Hux’s strength went out, Kylo lifting him up just to drag him back down, fucking Hux onto him. Hux’s more delicate hand and wrist were in the frame, holding on to Kylo’s forearm. There was a glimpse of red pubic hair, but Hux’s arm and the edge of the cloak he’d pulled over himself obscured his weeping cock. Hands gripping flesh, that was the focus. Hands determined to hold on to the last, even if it was for ill.</p><p>“Are you going to sell this one?” Hux asked.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Kylo answered honestly. “I think it’s my best work.”</p><p>There were people who would recognize Kylo’s hand in the photo. Maybe his parents, his family. After Rey’s call they’d be able to put a face to the owner of the ginger pubes too. Hux wondered if Leia would also recognize the cloak.</p><p>“You can, if you like,” Hux said mildly.</p><p>They went at it again, in bed proper this time. “Do you feel it?” Kylo asked breathlessly, and Hux knew he wasn’t talking about their bodies. “Do you feel how good it is? Everything’s changed. We were living in a cage but we’re free now. I knew if you felt it you would--” he broke off, moaning.</p><p>“You didn’t have to bewitch me,” Hux grunted. “If you do it again I’ll cut you up. Give you some scars to look at the next time you think about it.”</p><p>“I just wanted you to see. Once you’ve done it--”</p><p>“I <em> have </em> done it,” Hux snapped. He remembered his father and watched Kylo’s face shift in comic surprise, seeing the thoughts play in Hux’s mind. “Leave it to you to have an ego so big you think you’ve invented murder, <em> Ren </em>.”</p><p>“But do you feel <em> it? </em> The force, how <em> cold </em> it is?”</p><p>Hux did feel something deep inside, the click of the universe’s gears turning, some great dark shadow falling on them like the reverse of a spotlight, centering them on an altar of bones built for dark carrion gods. But the feeling was slippery and he lost hold, coming back into their bedroom where the only magic was how wonderful Kylo felt under his hands and shuddering on his cock. <em> I don’t know how to do what you’ve done </em>, Hux thought with an icy stab of panic. Kylo’s power wasn’t built for two. Hux had no magic in his blood, only a tendency toward addiction and a mean streak a thousand miles wide. Hux fucked Kylo harder, and didn’t know whether he meant it as punishment or reward.</p><p><em> I don’t need power like his. I have my own. It’s less flashy. So what? I like it better that way </em>. How many fights in history were won with sheer grit instead of sorcery? Hux was willing to bet it was the majority. He was happy with lead under his fingertips. Let Kylo keep flaming swords to himself.</p><p>There was a moment between twilight and darkness when Hux almost managed to tear free and dive back into sanity. He shifted in Kylo’s arms, thinking that Kylo didn’t have the means to follow him back to London if he could just get out of the house. Dim intuition told him the door wouldn’t open when he tried it. Kylo would have locked it. And Kylo could get him anywhere with rage to drive his focus, his mind swiveling into place like a camera lens. The moment passed. Hux nuzzled his face into Kylo’s neck and bit him until the flesh opened beneath his teeth and Kylo groaned in heady pleasure-pain. Kylo’s hands rubbed broad and warm over his back and thighs as Hux lapped at the blood, and his mind turned to darker impulses.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was supposed to be like 5k and then I slipped, and I could write more for it honestly. There's a whole haunted house bit that I just am not going to do because I have other things I need to be doing. Y'all don't even want to know about the cellar.<br/>I think that from here they get bloodthirsty and carried away and then eventually driven out just like Anakin was and Hux will get his London wish. Murder Husbands-esque. ((Edit: adding an image in was an adventure! Hoo boy))</p><p>Detailed TW:<br/>Hux shoots a young man to death for spying on them and then consumes his blood. It is implied that Kylo disemboweled another with a sword.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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